Cashlessness in India: Vision,policy and practices

Over the past few years, an increasing convergence can be observed between international and Indian initiatives towards cashlessness, often involving a broad range of actors and influences. Despite this convergence, it is also clear that the conceptualization and implementation, or goals and outcomes of cashlessness can vary considerably, which indicates the need for a closer look at the Indian case. In this introductory note to the special issue on cashlessness in India, we outline the variety of institutions, stakeholders (regulatory, financial and technological actors), technologies and policies involved. As we have observed, digital payments and financial inclusion are two significant planks of cashlessness in India. Perhaps as a result, digital payments have been intentionally defined in a broad manner in India – ranging from anti-cash to less-cash and now contactless payments in the aftermath of Covid-19. Considering the variety of legal, economic, social and technological concerns involved, this special issue adopts 2 complementary foci to study cashlessness in India: technological visions and the systems undergirding it, and practices of end users. The special issue includes four papers. The first paper argues that the Digital India programme may lead to the commercialization of bias. The second paper historicizes the Indian demonetization of 2016 and examines its stated and unstated goals. The next paper provides a conceptual model on technology adoption in the context of digital payments. The final paper argues that users strategically switch between multiple payments media based on the context in which the transaction is taking place.     

论煤炭企业理财策略

分析了煤炭企业资金管理存在问题,并提出了相应的理财策略以及资金管理过程中应注意的几个问题。     

Digital divide and financial development in Africa

This paper analyses the influence of the digital divide on the new IMF financial development index on a panel of 34 African countries over the period 2005–2017. Using the instrumental variables technique, we arrive at the main result that ICT divide is a severe handicap for the financial systems development in Africa. The use of financial development sub-indices relating to financial institutions and financial markets, as well as their dimensions confirms the negative effect of the digital divide. Our result remains stable when we use alternative measures of financial development and ICT indicators. Furthermore, we found that the digital divide between countries is also a severe handicap for the financial development of countries lagging behind. On the other hand, countries with a technological lead or a digital dividend have relatively developed financial systems. Some recommendations have been suggested to promote digital penetration in Africa, as well as to improve the receptivity and flexibility of African financial systems.     

Exploratory navigation and salesperson performance: Investigating selected antecedents and boundary conditions in high-technology and financial services contexts

Salesperson behavior aimed at improving internal company response to customer requests has received little attention in the industrial marketing literature in comparison to external, customer-directed behaviors. In this study, the phenomenon of “salesperson navigation” (SpN) is developed within the context of a research model of selected antecedents and boundary-conditions that influence a primary form of navigational behavior, or “exploratory navigation”. The research model's utility in predicting sales performance is tested empirically with data from two Fortune 500 sales forces. The findings show that the traits of competitiveness and expert power significantly enhance the salesperson's propensity to engage in exploratory navigation behavior. Exploratory navigation, in turn, is found to have a significant and positive association with salesperson job performance, contingent upon specific boundary conditions within the salesperson's own organization (i.e., sales management support and internal competitive climate). The article concludes by offering sales researchers and industrial marketing managers implications derived from the study as well as directions for further work.     

Material power and normative conflict in global and local agrifood governance: The lessons of ‘Golden Rice’ in India

This special section aims to investigate the interaction of global and local forces in shaping agrifood governance. It starts from the recognition that a multitude of actors and norms shape today’s agrifood system. The resulting opaqueness of the systems makes it extremely difficult to understand and explain processes and outcomes of agrifood governance. Given the sustainability challenges facing the agrifood system, improvements in our understanding of what the interaction of global and local actors and norms means on the ground are urgently needed, however. The section, therefore, analyses agrifood governance in India across a selected group of cases. It does so by employing a systematic framework emphasizing the material and ideational dimensions of power and their interaction. The section has chosen India as the setting in which to analyze this interaction due to the crucial role the food demand and supply of this rising power plays in today’s agrifood system. This article provides the special sections’ analytical framework, which uses the interplay of material and ideational dimensions of power as a focal lens. In addition, the article applies this framework to an empirical study of the political conflict around GMO foods in India, specifically the case of ‘Golden Rice’.     

Asian contexts and the search for general theory in management research: A rejoinder

“Asian Management Research Needs More Self-confidence” (Meyer, 2006) generated a surprisingly extended and diverse set of responses from Asia and beyond. In this rejoinder, I draw together a few lines of arguments that have emerged in that debate with the aim of moving the debate—and thus Asian management research agendas—forward. In particular, I argue that context is a crucial variable to explain management behavior, yet for practical reasons, it has been neglected in research published in top journals. Thus, I challenge management scholars in Asia and beyond to devise new research strategies to enhance our understanding of the contextual boundaries of our knowledge.

Competition in Local Markets: Some Evidence from the Spanish Retail Banking Market

Using the entry threshold concept developed by Bresnahan and Reiss (Brookings Pap Econ Act 3:833–882, 1987), this paper examines how competitive conditions vary in independent local banking markets when the number of depository branches grows. With data on the Spanish retail banking sector in 2003, I estimate a discrete choice model to calculate the entry thresholds. The empirical evidence suggests that the entry of a new branch implies competition on a local level. Local branches seem to have some scope for changing prices fixed on national and regional levels. Moreover, the entry of new branches increases the competition among branches with instruments other than price (e.g., advertising, location, and promotion).      

Implications of mandatory labeling of GM food in India: Evidence from the supply side

We assess the supply-side economic implications of introducing a strict mandatory labeling policy for genetically modified (GM) food in India as proposed in 2006. We apply our analysis to the case of cottonseed oil and soybean oil, two products that would be the first affected by such regulation. We find that GM food labeling would generate adjustment and implementation costs and consumer benefits would not always be visible and would highly depend on the degree of enforcement.     

Telework paradoxes and practices: the importance of the nature of work

Research on telework often focuses on the outcomes of telework, investigating if telework is ultimately a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing for teleworkers and their organisations. However, findings across telework research studies are often inconclusive, requiring deeper engagement with potential explanations for contradictory and paradoxical results. This study uses virtual ethnography (netnography) to investigate naturally occurring data. By analysing online debates related to Yahoo!'s decision to ban telework for its employees, this study surfaces aspects currently overlooked by telework research. These findings suggest that the diversity of the nature of work undertaken by knowledge workers and perceived differences in the suitability of different tasks for telework are of critical importance for understanding telework from a practice perspective. However, deeper engagement with the different kinds of work activities of knowledge workers is currently missing in the telework research literature. This study therefore contributes to better understanding of telework and paradoxical findings in telework research.     

Interest groups,power relations,and the configuration of value chains: The case of biodiesel in India

Production of biodiesel is technologically simple, and the process of value addition – from the cultivation of oilseeds to oil extraction and transesterification – is straightforward. There is, however, great variation in the socioeconomic configuration of this value chain. In some regions of India, the cultivation of tree-borne oilseeds is organised in a social forestry mode, in which poor landless people are paid to perform reforestation tasks and receive usufruct rights to collect oilseeds; in other regions, peasant cooperatives, subcontracting arrangements between farmers and transnational corporations, or large-scale plantations are promoted. There are also many different end uses and ways of processing biodiesel, from village-level projects for rural off-grid electrification to large scale processing. This article explains how five Indian states have developed biodiesel policies that reflect different political goals and favour different constituencies, reflecting the states’ specific socioeconomic structures, power relations norms.     

Organizational ownership,competitive intensity,and firm performance: an empirical study of the Indian manufacturing sector

Emerging countries are using privatization as a key strategy in their drive to become free market economies. Although these ownership changes are rapidly gaining prominence, the academic literature has been equivocal about the performance benefits of private vs. state ownership. The lack of clarity in findings can be largely traced to the underspecification of the models that prior studies have examined. Specifically, prior studies have mostly ignored the central role of competitive rivalry. This paper proposes a model that centers around the interactive, inseparable effects of ownership and competitive rivalry on firm performance. Results of the empirical examination set in India show that competitive intensity moderates the relationship between ownership and performance. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rice market integration and food security in Nepal: The role of cross-border trade with India

Coarse rice market integration between Nepal and India is analyzed applying a threshold autoregressive model. The price response behaviour of traders is found to be consistent with an asymmetric price adjustment mechanism, indicating coarse rice prices in Nepal respond to shocks originating in India. The results show that adjustments to negative price deviations from long-run stable equilibrium are faster than adjustments to the positive ones given a null threshold. Given that trade flows mainly from India to Nepal, Nepali traders would adjust their prices upward to align with the long-run equilibrium value relatively more quickly in the case of negative price deviations, than if the price deviations were positive. Such a high speed of adjustment to negative price deviations could be detrimental to net food buyers’ food security status in the absence of a price stabilization mechanism. However, a price stabilization policy in Nepal, a food deficit and import dependent country, would hardly have any effect on prices unless further effort is made to build up the level of national food reserves for short-term food security interventions. In the current context of structurally low levels of national food reserves, an alternative short-term policy such as foreign aid, in the form of food or income transfers, targeting the most vulnerable households to price increases is necessary through social safety net programmes. In the long-run, an improvement of transportation infrastructure between market hubs (other than the Biratnagar trade basin) in the Terai (Nepal) and India would contribute to the reduction of transaction costs and create incentives for more competition in formal cross-border trade with India. In times of negative shocks such as the high food price crisis in 2008, restrictive food trade policies in India will continue to undermine household food security in Nepal.     

Internationalization of R&;D in China and India: Conventional wisdom versus reality

In spite of a growing trend of foreign research and development (R&;D) investment in China and India, academic research in this field has not kept pace. To what extent are opportunities and challenges of managing R&;D different in these countries from those in the West? By drawing on academic literature as well as press articles on this topic, we compare and contrast what the conventional wisdom suggests and what the realities are in China and India. We suggest that multinational corporations (MNCs) should not forget the conventional wisdom of managing their innovative R&;D policies but should also learn from the unique challenges and capabilities in China and India.     

Best new product development and management practices in the Korean high-tech industry

This paper investigates critical factors affecting the likelihood of new product success and effective new product development (NPD) models for Korean high-tech firms. Empirical results suggest that successful projects differ from unsuccessful projects in project environment, skills and resources, project leadership, strategic fit, efficient NPD process, and effective product-positioning strategies.This study confirmed that efficient and effective new product development and management were important determinants of high-tech firms' competitive advantage. Furthermore, the findings of this study raised questions about some commonly held beliefs when compared with Western studies focusing on high-tech industries.     

Joint learning in R&D collaborations and the facilitating relational practices

The present study considers joint learning as a relational dynamic capability and examines the role of relational practices as enablers of joint learning in R&D collaboration between suppliers and their customers. The study applies a qualitative comparative case method to analyze seven dyadic cases, selected based on a quantitative dataset and cluster analysis. Our results indicate that in dyadic relationships, firms would benefit from developing practices related to relational investments, relational structures, and relational capital that facilitate joint learning and yield collaborative advantages from R&D interactions. This paper contributes to the existing literature on joint learning in R&D collaborations by defining joint learning as a relational dynamic capability and by focusing on the practices that facilitate it in R&D collaboration.     

应对国际金融危机中国建筑企业的机遇与挑战

金融危机的继续发展,其影响也越来越深入各个实体经济,资金量需求大的建筑业也难以避免,国际上资金的短缺和投资的急剧减少使得全球建筑企业资金链的维持变得困难。在世界经济中扮演越来越重要角色的中国在本次金融危机的大救亡当中起着举足轻重的作用,中国政府为保证经济稳定健康发展,推出大量政策直接或间接推动各种建筑项目的实施以带动经济发展和解决就业困难。我国建筑施工企业在这种“外冷内热”的大环境下面临危与机并存的局面。文章根据当前形势,对中国建筑施工企业面对的机遇与挑战进行分析,并提出应对策略。     

Conceptualizing digital and physical connectivity: The position of European cities in Internet backbone and air traffic flows

‘Digital’ telecommunication flows and ‘physical’ corporeal flows provide researchers with comprehensive indicators of the economic interactions between cities. However, previous research drawing on telecommunication-based measures of inter-urban connectivity has been hampered by inadequate conceptualizations and data. This paper draws on this observation to devise a new approach for measuring inter-urban connectivity based on a city’s insertion in Internet backbone networks. The straightforward example of air transport flows is thereby used to outline this approach. To investigate telecommunication and air passenger flows, use is made of European statistics on Internet eXchange Points and the MIDT airline database respectively. The approach is illustrated through a systematic comparison of the position of European cities in both types of networks. It is found that European cities assume largely similar hierarchical levels in terms of digital and physical information flows, albeit that the digital connectivity of centrally located European cities is often somewhat higher than that of peripheral cities with a similar levels of physical connectivity.     

The end justifies the definition: The manifold outlooks on the digital divide and their practical usefulness for policy-making

Based on the theory of the diffusion of innovations through social networks, the article discusses the main approaches researchers have taken to conceptualize the digital divide. The result is a common framework that addresses the questions of who (e.g. divide between individuals, countries, etc.), with which kinds of characteristics (e.g. income, geography, age, etc.), connects how (mere access or effective adoption), to what (e.g. phones, Internet, digital TV, etc.). Different constellations in these four variables lead to a combinatorial array of choices to define the digital divide. This vast collection of theoretically justifiable definitions is contrasted with the question of how the digital divide is defined in practice by policy makers. The cases of the United States, South Korea, and Chile are used to show that many diverse actors with dissimilar goals are involved in confronting the digital divide. Each of them takes a different outlook on the challenge. This leads to the question if this heterogeneity is harmful and if countries that count with a coherent national strategy and common outlook on digital development do better than others. It is shown that the effect of a coherent vision is secondary to tailor-made sector-specific efforts. On the contrary, a one-size-fits-all outlook on a multifaceted challenge might rather be harmful. This leads to the conclusion that it is neither theoretically feasible, nor empirically justifiable to aim for one single definition of the digital divide. The digital divide is best defined in terms of a desired impact. Since those are diverse, so are the definitions of the challenge. The best that can be done is to come up with a comprehensive theoretical framework that allows for the systematic classification of different definitions, such as the one presented in this article.     

The impacts of marketing and operations capabilities on financial performance in the UK retail sector: A resource-based perspective

Drawing upon the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, this study investigates the relationships among marketing capability, operations capability, and financial performance. Using archival data of 186 retail firms in the UK, we find that that marketing capability has a significant impact on operations capability, and that operations capability is significantly and positively related to retail efficiency. The results also suggest that operations capability fully mediates the relationship between marketing capability and financial performance. The findings of this study provide practical insights for practicing managers to consider when developing functional capabilities in order to achieve superior financial performance.     

Beyond access: A relational and resource-based model of household Internet adoption in isolated communities

Isolated rural communities face specific challenges associated with their geographical context in the digital inclusion process. Thus, based on a relational and resource-based model as well as diffusion research, this study explored personal, positional factors, as well as material and social resources of household Internet connection in remote communities that received infrastructure access for the first time between 2010 and 2011 in Chile. A face-to-face representative survey conducted in 22 communities revealed that, among personal variables, age and innovative personality played a role in household Internet adoption. Material resources such as income and transport connectivity were also relevant. However, social resources were among the most significant predictors. That is, the presence of children in the household and larger social networks were associated with greater chances of Internet connection.